Still Life on Lockdown

I've been setting up a wee studio upstairs and playing around with various bits and bobs.  I'm not really into Still Life but I have to admit it's been a lot of fun - trying to tell a story.  I cobbled together some stuff and attempted to make a coherent picture from it.  I suspect it's one of those times when you need to look objectively at the scene you've created and take one item away.  Anyway, here's a few first attempts for your delectation.

In this first one we have the subject writing home to his sweetheart from his travels in some foreign clime:

From the 'Blad, on Barclay graded paper

The briefcase belonged to my late Uncle - that's his address book too. The photograph is of my mum in her younger days and the camera is a very nice Zorki 6 complete with leather case that someone kindly sent me a while back.  The bottle of Quink actually has my name on it - from my first year at secondary school.  It's hard to think we still used proper pens and ink back then (1974).  It has lain in a box up in my mum's house for the past 45 years and had dried up a bit - but a little hot water brought it back to life.  I guess that's the sort of things mothers keep, for some reason ;)  Anyway, I'm glad she did.  I found the stamps, by the way, inside one of the pockets of the briefcase - one has Queen Elizabeth on it, the other has her father, King George, so I guess my Uncle used this case from the '30s or '40s.  The scene was lit from side by just a desk lamp with a warm bulb.  I think I put a piece of muslin over it to soften it a little.  Can you spot the rookie mistake?  There's a little bit of blu-tac showing under the pen...

Then I got thinking what other period photographs do we have and after a bit of digging around I shifted the story to a military one:

Writing home to the family

In this one the family shot is one of me (standing at the back, sleeves rolled up, ready for action), brother and mother.  The dog tags belonged to my wife's grandfather and date back to WWI.  The group of soldiers include my grandfather's brother's son, who joined the US Army when he turned 18. Everything else is the same (including the blasted blu-tac).

So that was my first foray into the world of Still Life.  I'm not quite done with this scene yet - there are other shots lying inside various cameras as we speak and at some stage they will come out and onto paper.  After that I've various other ideas to keep me off the streets - I'm fortunate in that my mother never moved house, so things got set aside into various drawers and sheds and never thrown out.  Not that she's a hoarder - she doesn't buy stuff to keep, but she doesn't throw much out.  Probably it's a wartime/rationing thing - 'stuff' was scarce back then so you kept, mended and made do.  Suddenly, after 50 odd years, some of the stuff she's kept takes on a rather interesting dimension.  So I could get into this Still Life melarky, I think.

Dunluce Castle to Benbane Head

One taken a wee while ago, from Maghercross, just outside Portrush:

From the 'Blad, HP5+ and Ilford Warmtone paper

The ruins of Dunluce Castle are in the foreground, Benbane Head (Causeway territory) in the far distance and the thin line maybe just visible between the sea and the sky would be Kintyre in Scotland.  This would have been a typical Northern Irish day, with the sky covered in a fairly thick layer of cloud.  It can get pretty windy in Magheracross, as it's fairly well exposed to the elements but it's a grand place to stop for a look about.  To the West lies the White Rocks/Portrush East Strand and a view over to Inishowen and Malin Head (Donegal).  Next time I'm there I might point the camera in that direction.

The Tea-Drinker

Another from the long lost roll of HP5+ inside the ME Super - from the same cafe in Portstewart, I think.  I don't remember taking this, but I must have snapped this lady up 'on the quiet':

Someone's Granny (hopefully!).  On Ilford Warmtone fibre paper, cropped to square

The Prom

If you're a regular reader of this drivel, you'll know what I am referring to if I talk about 'The Prom'.  Portstewart Promenade, of course - where one goes to take the air from time to time.  Actually most people seem to go to drive up and down and then if they get lucky and get a parking space it's ice-creams all round.  It's some craic down the Prom, I can tell you...

I think we had just exited from one of the many cafes which go to make up the 'shopping' side of the Prom when this view leapt up and into a very old Pentax P30 camera which just happened to be in my hands at the time.  For some reason, it ended up being printed quite contrasty this morning when I was in the darkroom - sometimes it just happens like that:

Portstewart Prom, via very very old Tri-X sloshed about in Ilford ID-11 1+1 for about 13 minutes and printed on Ilford Warmtone fibre paper.  I know what you're thinking, by the way - he's cleverly used a red filter to get the sky like that and get that amazing contrast on the chrome railings.  However, I can assure you that no filter was used in the making of this shot. It's beyond me...

I wonder if the Prom is still there?  Hopefully I'll find out sometime soon - although I'll not be wandering along the Prom for the foreseeable, even if they do lift the lockdown in the next few weeks...it'll be as busy as ever in no time at all.  I'll either choose my time (early morning) or just do a drive-through en route to somewhere a little quieter.

I have to admit there are aspects of the lockdown which I am enjoying.  Not driving being #1.  No school runs, no music lesson runs, no runs to the shop.  My body is feeling the benefits, that's for sure.  I enjoy living where we do too much to ever move, but the downside is we are pretty reliant on a car.  Public transport is next to non-existent here - well, there are buses but they are very unreliable.  Plus the thought of standing at the side of the road waiting for one to happen along doesn't exactly fill me with glee - no shelter from the elements, see.

So I could handle a few months of this without too much trouble...but I know it's driving Missy a little mad.  When you're almost 17 it's only natural to want out with your friends, instead of being stuck in with your parents.  She's reading a lot so it's not all bad...but she's reading at night...all night...and so is slowly turning nocturnal.  Actually not that slowly, if I'm being honest...

Friend

I lady I've known for a fair few years - snapped up on a visit to Portstewart a couple of years ago.  It was from a film that I discovered hiding in a Pentax ME Super.  I gave it a light sepia tone:

HP5+/ID-11 on Ilford Warmtone fibre paper

Being direct and positive

What with this lockdown thing I thought it would be a good opportunity to dig out that box of Imago Direct Positive paper that's been in the back of my film fridge for a while.  You load it in the 4x5 film holder as usual and shoot it at about ISO 3 and you end up with a positive image...so it's a one-off, no negative is produced.

There are, apparently, a couple of ways you can approach it, depending on the look you're after.  Using it straight out of the box and you'll get a very high contrast print.  Alternatively, pre-flash the paper for a second or so under the enlarger and you'll get a more normal result.

In for a penny, I thought, and pre-flashed the first sheet.  Well, the first challenge was to make sure I was pre-flashing the correct side of the paper - no easy feat in the dark.  Unlike 4x5 film, there are no notches to guide you, so it's a case of feeling both sides of the paper.  It's a gloss coated paper, so eventually I convinced myself that the slightly smoother side was the business end.  I'm working in complete darkness since it's supposed to be sensitive to normal orange safelight (red is OK, apparently) - more of that later, by the way.

So, first sheet pre-flashed and loaded and off we go to set up the Sinar.  My wife had collected a few pine cones the other day so I put some in a glass bowl on the kitchen table.  In hindsight, it wasn't a great choice of subject matter...

My first, forgettable, direct positive print

Even with pre-flashing it's a bit black-and-white and I'm not getting much detail in the cones but I was just pleased to get anything at all.  Developing and fixing, by the way, was done in open trays and just to see what happened I did have the orange safelight on, but faced away from the trays.  Everything seemed OK with regard to that - which, as you will see in a minute, just lured me into a false sense of security...

Anyway, so far so good - something was coming out on print.  On to the next experiment - no pre-flashing, so I was expecting a more contrasty look.  I set a tray of old film clips on the floor next to the patio doors and lugged the Sinar over.  As you can see, it was a bit precarious - there's a lot of weight in that setup and whole thing wasn't very far from toppling over - which would have made a heck of a mess, I can tell you:

The setup (phone snap)

There's a lot of trust in that tripod head!  It's the proper Sinar pan-tilt head (which are a bit like hen's teeth, with a price to match, unfortunately) on my old 1970s Slik tripod but it held firm - although I was tiptoeing around it very carefully, it has to be said.

So, shot taken and off I headed to the darkroom ready for the masterpiece to reveal itself.  Now here's where things didn't exactly go according to plan vis-a-vis the safelight.  It didn't take long to see that something was amiss - the print was completely fogged.  Hmm...did I load the paper the wrong side up?  Let's try that again...   Load paper, take shot, develop print.  At least it's a quick turnaround.  Same result...completely fogged.  By now I was really scratching my head.  The only difference with the way I'd approached the first print was that I hadn't pre-flashed the paper.  Could that make a difference to the paper's sensitivity to the orange safelight?  Only one way to tell.  Off I went again...load paper, take shot, develop - but this time in complete darkness, so I'm sloshing the print around in the tray and counting for a bit and then I'm fishing it out, rinsing it and fixing it.  Lights on.  I get an image!   It looks a tad under-developed but the image is there.  OK, it's looking better, so go again...load, shoot, develop for a bit longer and here's what came out:

A more memorable direct positive print

So...from what I can tell, pre-flashing the paper seemed to reduce or eliminate the paper's sensitivity to my orange safelight.  I'm afraid my knowledge of chemistry is insufficient to offer an explanation as to why.  Normally, pre-flashing paper results in getting a little detail in the highlights where there was none previously and, combined with less exposure, better separation in the shadows, but it does reduce overall contrast since you are essentially fogging the paper.  (The reduction in contrast can of course be overcome by using higher contrast filtration).  So...perhaps the fact that the Imago paper was already fogged with white light means that it was no longer (or perhaps just less) sensitive to the orange safelight. 

One final observation.  It was quite a pleasant change to work with paper rather than film - without a negative the turnaround is a lot quicker - 2 minutes in developer and the same in the fix and you're done.  Not quite digital quick, I grant you, but not far off ;)

Dune grasses

Dune grass rarely looks anything other than good on B&W print but sometimes it's hard to get an interesting shot - particularly when you're so familiar with the area.  Like most dunes around here there's only a few other shrubs and plants which can tolerate the harsh climate and most of them would cut you to ribbons if you venture too close.  I've no idea what these spiky looking shrubs are called - their black stems made them stand out from the surrounding grass:

Portstewart Dunes, March 2020 HP5 on Ilford Cooltone paper

Still life on lockdown

You know things are bad when you start taking photographs of your camera gear.  The sun actually made an appearance last week - briefly - so I quickly got the Sinar 4x5 out and set up a little scene on the garden table.  I say 'quickly' but of course it's all relative - there ain't nothing quick about setting up a 4x5 monorail, that's for sure.  I was worried the light might go, but in the end it stayed bright for a good while...maybe too bright, if anything, as you can see:

Some old gear, via HP5, on Adox MCP paper, light sepia tone

I think I was stopped down to f/22, or f/32 on this one...there isn't much depth of field at the larger apertures at this size.  The camera is the Zeiss 6x9 Nettar I picked up for peanuts at a local auction a while back.  A thing of beauty it is - even if the shutter fails to operate when it's cold, as I found out a couple of times before the lockdown.  Most frustrating when you are out around the coast early morning in freezing conditions with only one camera which then decides not to work and you have to drive back home with nothing to show for your efforts except raw fingers.

If you're interested in the details, it has a Novar-Anastigmat 105mm f/4.5 lens, which stops down to f/22.  Focussing is, of course, not coupled and there is no rangefinder built in - you have to use the one between your ears ;)  The shutter is a Prontor SVS, with 1/300th the fastest speed down to 1s and then B.  Everything seems pretty good on it - speeds sound OK, apertures look fine and while the focussing ring at the front of the lens could be a little smoother it seems to work OK.  There's even a device to prevent double exposures - it only lets you fire the shutter after you've wound on a couple of turns.

The lovely little rangefinder sitting at the front came with the camera, as did the roll of Kodak Verichrome, which was inside it.  There might be something on it, which could be fun to see.  I'm not sending it away, though - I rather like the look of it.  If I home process it I'll re-roll the backing paper onto a spare spool - as I rather like it as a period 'object' to photograph.  The filter, hood and tabletop tripod (Zeiss) were part of the deal as well -  and everything in their original leather cases.

The other camera that came in the same deal was a Kodak Pony 135, which is also in pretty good condition.  The top and bottom plates are metal, while the body is bakelite. There's a Kodak Anaston 44mm f/3.5 lens on it (f/3.5-f/22), with a 4-speed shutter (1/300, 1/100, 1/50, 1/25 and B).  Kodak have tried to make it easy for the user, with markings on the lens to help with exposure.  So if, for example, you have Kodachome loaded on a sunny day, the suggested settings are 1/50s at f/5.6-f/8.  For the faster Ektachrome fillm, f/11 is suggested.  It's a sweet little camera.

I set down a couple of old 35mm film canisters I had from back in the day - including a nice metal one with Kodak embossed on it.

Kodak Pony 135 on the Sinar 4x5 (cropped to square).

Some day soon I'll post some prints from these lovely cameras.

Portrush Plaza

Another place I frequent often (is that a tautology?  Can you frequent somewhere not very often?) is Portrush Plaza, particularly on a sunny day when the lines and geometry of the plaza 'furniture' make for good shots.  This one was from a while back and I was playing around on the computer with a scan of the negative, trying to see if anything could be salvaged from it.  The bottom line is I wasn't sure, but I printed it anyway, so here it is for y'all:

Portrush Plaza, via the 'Blad.

I think it would have benefitted from using a smaller f-stop and keeping the clock tower of the train station in the background a bit sharper.  Also, I wanted a tighter crop on the wooden bench on the foreground - a bit like this (cropped in software):

But when I do this, I lose the square format (well, if I want to keep all the funky light poles in, that is, which I do).  So all in all I don't think this one is for the wall - next time I go there I shall attempt to get the shot I want in camera - which I think is what you're supposed to do anyway ;)